August 2016 Blog Posts (136)

County has most deaths • Palm Beach County, nearly 45 miles long, ranks highest in the state for pedestrian deaths between railroad crossings. Of the 33 people killed statewide in 2015, seven died in Palm Beach County, ranking it first for what’s called “trespasser deaths.” • On the FEC tracks, Palm Beach County ranked first in 2015 with five of 12 pedestrian deaths statewide. The previous year, the county and Miami-Dade County each had four deaths among a total…

Q. Where has locally acquired Zika been found so far? A. The Florida Department of Health says the two nontravel cases of Zika in Palm Beach County don’t constitute an active outbreak here, though officials aren’t providing specifics. Palm Beach County’s Mosquito Control division has stepped up its mosquito control campaign. Its latest aerial spraying efforts were focused on 162,000 acres west of State Road 7, including Jupiter Farms, Caloosa,…

Politics, Zika, pythons, hurricanes. Welcome to Florida. You know what I mean. You watch TV news and read the headlines. It’s all people want to talk about. Maybe we should be talking instead about an average of 13 overdose calls each day. Yes, 13. Each day. That’s the number the Delray Beach police officer shared with us as we watched a young man carried out of a building in the 700 block of Atlantic Avenue on a recent evening. It was the third drug overdose call the…

Delray Beach’s City Commission approved negotiating with two vendors to provide a smart parking system for the barrier island and the city’s two garages. The vendors are Parkeon and T2 Systems. The commission will approve the contract after reviewing their proposals. The initial order will be 50 units, said Jorge Alarcon, new chief parking facilities administrator. The units can be solar-powered, able to take a variety of payments, programmed to allow for residents’ discount by…

The East Coast Greenway path along the ocean was reconsidered recently by the full City Commission and deemed fitting with the image Delray Beach wants to convey. “It’s not a design effort but a recognition of Delray for what it is,” said Jim Chard, chairman of Human Powered Delray, a group that promotes walking and cycling in the city. “It’s very similar to the Tree City USA designation, the All America City … calling attention to [us]…

The good news is that most local government employees throughout the coastal communities of south Palm Beach County may be seeing raises in the upcoming fiscal year. The not-so-great news is that for many of them, these raises will probably do little more than help them keep up with the increased cost of living in South Florida. On average, most of the communities along the coast are proposing employee pay increases of about 3…

The fate of the historic Boynton Beach High School, which seemed certain to be saved earlier this year, is unsettled again. At the Aug. 17 budget meeting of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency, city commissioners sitting as the CRA board did not want to commit to spending money on the high school now. A majority wanted to wait to see how development teams would use it in their Town Square plans. They will review the request…

The Oscar Magnuson House is working its way through the Boynton Beach approval process to become a restaurant that specializes in light bites and craft beers. The proposed owner of the 1,500-square-foot house received City Commission approval Aug. 16 to add 1,266 square feet to the rear of the house for a kitchen, restrooms and a portion of the bar. A rear porch, added in the 1950s, will be demolished. The tapas eatery will seat 183…

Despite agreeing on terms for a new working relationship with Town Attorney Brad Biggs three months ago, South Palm Beach council members remain divided over whether he should keep his job. Councilwoman Stella Gaddy Jordan sharply criticized Biggs’ performance during a stormy Aug. 23 town meeting and said the council should open his position and interview applicants. Jordan said that, during the town’s recent negotiations with…

Boynton Beach Utilities could provide water to Hypoluxo residents at lower rates than town residents and business owners currently pay to Manalapan. That’s according to a rate comparison presented to Hypoluxo council members at their Aug. 17 meeting by Boynton Beach Utilities Director Colin Groff. According to Groff’s chart, a Hypoluxo homeowner with a 5/8-inch water meter pays a monthly base charge of $42.85 to Manalapan plus…

Efforts to install license-plate recognition cameras in several communities along State Road A1A in south Palm Beach County are continuing to move forward, with Delray Beach commissioners giving a green light last month for the installation of systems at five locations east of the Intracoastal Waterway. Delray Beach commissioners approved spending $166,000 for the systems, clearing the way for project leaders to begin planning for…

Under a new special events policy, city taxpayers will soon stop subsidizing private special events in Delray Beach. Mayor Cary Glickstein praised the special events task force that developed the policy for staying focused on establishing a level playing field and recovering the city’s true cost of events. “The reason we have so many events is that we have a cool town with a walkable main street, and many [promoters] were getting a…

What better way to celebrate National Dog Day than with an impromptu dog park at Old School Square? Sara Toosarvandani and her daughter Grace enjoy watching the dogs while Bill Bathurst talks to his pup Angus. Dozens of dogs enjoyed an evening of monitored play. Jerry Lower/The…

Neighborly relations between Ocean Ridge and Boynton Beach have frayed in recent months, mostly because of the city’s support for high-density residential projects on Federal Highway. Now the two municipalities have found something else to dispute: Who will protect and serve the good citizens of Briny Breezes? Ocean Ridge thought it had a three-year contract to provide police services to Briny Breezes ready for the town’s approval on Aug.…